Chapter 113 Awash
❀ Maeve ❀
The sensations in my body were a curious thing. Fear warred with hunger, and hunger with sensuality.
Despite not being in his right mind, Nikolai had been asking for my permission for the past few minutes.
“Your blood,” he gulped, squeezing me against his hard chest, “it calls to me. Just a taste, my queen…”
“You need to let me go. Now.” I squirmed in his hold. My nipples brushed over his skin, distracting me from the issue at hand.
He wasn’t violent… not yet. I dreaded seeing him as I’d seen Lyssa in the throes of the curse of wrath.
Even worse, I had my own body to contend with. My nerves were on fire. As if my senses had been at the barest level, everything now seemed dialed up to a thousand degrees.
I couldn’t think with his virile body close to me. His scent coiled in my head like a vice. His skin brushed against mine with all the purposefulness of seduction.
Still, I was wary.
And he wasn’t letting me go. He was getting even rougher, his voice harsher and more grating.
“You gave me this hunger, soothe it.” His words were accusing.
“You could hurt me if you drank from me in this condition!” I insisted.
But deep down, it was more complicated. Somehow, I didn’t want to forfeit all the blood I’d drained from him.
I felt the selfishness arrest me and spread out over my thoughts.
“Let me get Jessica. You could feed from her, or any other…” I paused.
What was I thinking? Didn’t I used to be jealous of him feeding from anyone else?
“Never another’s. Only yours.”
“We’re both vampires now,” I said slowly, even as my belly rolled with strange sensations. My head pounded from oversensitivity. “We’re going to need an external source.”
His eyes narrowed, as if remembering the situation. His grip relented.
I took the opportunity to jump off his lap.
“You cursed me,” he sneered.
“And we’ll fix it,” I threw back over my shoulder, hand on my stomach. I nearly crashed into a row of cacti. “Right now, I think I’m transforming.”
“You’re already transformed,” he drawled with disinterest.
How he could switch from obsessed to aloof was beyond me. But he was probably also dealing with an identity change right now.
“Then I need time to acclimate. And you’re being unhelpful right now.”
I heard him rise, heard his steps as he approached.
“And who better to keep you company during this time?” His voice came from just behind me.
Silence.
I didn’t give it much thought. I’d gotten through some of the worst times of my life alone. Even surrounded.
Then he laughed. “Need I have asked? We both know you’re thinking it.”
“Thinking what?” I asked, absentminded.
My fingertips throbbed painfully. Even my claws looked different. They were longer. Less curved.
His tone was emotionless when he said, “Your wolf.”
My chest tightened. I turned to face him.
“Nikolai, where were you for the last two days? And what threat did you take care of on the night of my coronation?”
His lips twitched. “Ferals.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, my disbelief evident. “If it was Bastian, would you tell me?”
“You still hold hope that he’d come for you?” His fists were clenched, tone rising. “Did you forget how you left IronWolf? He knows you left with me. He knows you’re my bride and carry my mark. What makes you think he’ll come after a conquered female like you?”
I saw red.
“Conquered female like me?” I sneered, deathly calm. “Is that how you see me, then?”
He blinked. His face softened for a second before hardening again.
I stalked to him. “Let me remind you. If anything, and I mean anything, happens to Bastian, I will reject you. I will forsake you.”
“You make such declarations for one who hasn’t proven himself. It’s been half a year since he lost you… where is he now?”
“Fighting to get to me!” I screamed. “You don’t know him. What he’s been through, what he’s going through even now!”
“Then maybe you’re just not a priority to him. You are to me!” Nikolai bellowed back.
Veins stood out in his clenched arms. His eyes flashed with pain and something else.
I softened.
“I won’t pretend our love is easy. And I mean that about what I have with both of you.” I fought to ignore the new vampire urges upon me. “But the sooner you accept that this is my wish, the easier our lives will become.”
He snapped his gaze anywhere but at me. When he turned and kicked a pillar, I didn’t flinch.
Let him act up. What’s done is done.
We had an extra fish to fry on top of the bigger ones ahead.
I outlined them in my head as a distraction.
Learn my powers so I could find Bastian. He’d been gone long enough without me.
Kill Graves and destroy Lyssa’s essence before the crimson stone claws me from the inside out.
Then find a lasting cure to the curse of wrath before it takes my vampire mate and creeps up on me.
One look at Nikolai and my heart broke for him.
I tightened my jaw. I took a necessary risk to outfit me for the trials ahead.
He stood with his back to me, one hand pressed against the glass of the greenhouse, curly hair falling sensually down his neck.
“My darkness.” I walked to him and pressed my face to his back. “I love you. And I want you. But I also want you both. It doesn’t make you mean any less to me.”
“In my books, it does.”
I squeezed him in my arms. “As your queen, I insist.”
“Always down to that. You would order me to share you?”
How I would love to. But I regarded him as more than someone to command into accepting this choice. I’d at least try to make him see first.
I’d taken away his choice in one matter, and look how that turned out.
“To worship me,” I dragged my fangs down his naked back. He shuddered. “Do you not think I deserve it?”
He was silent.
“Speak to me,” I pressed.
I could feel our hearts beating in sync. Thundering as one.
“It would be difficult,” he grudgingly confessed.
“Aren’t all things? And just imagine. You may come to like it—”
My legs gave out. I crashed to the floor with a scream.
Nikolai spun, dropping to his knees. “What happened?” His hands patted my body urgently, looking for a wound.
But the wound was inside my body, between my ribs. My heart pounded against the tight fist wrapping around it, squeezing almost to bursting.
I couldn’t speak or gesture.
As my limbs spasmed out of control, my screams echoed into the night.
One image flashed before my reddened vision, blood tears streaming down the sides of my face…
The crimson stone—awash in my blood.